According to our prior copending application, a method of packaging poultry in tight-fitting bags in an automatic fashion, is disclosed. Although automatic packaging of regular machine-made products within individual packaging containers is well known, because of the irregularities in contour and weight distribution associated with poultry, no automatic tight-fit packaging of poultry suspended from a moving conveyor was deemed to be feasible prior to the invention disclosed in the aforementioned copending application, because of tumbling and dimensional interference. It was discovered, however, that automatic packaging could be effected as a practical matter if the birds were suspended in the same orientation from both legs by double hook carriers and dropped from the moving conveyor onto a fixed inclined surface for guided descent into the flexible film bag inflated by a stream of air from a blower associated with the bagging machine having a bag holding rack from which the bags are detached and dropped upon receipt of the product therein.
The packaging achieved by the invention disclosed in the aforementioned prior copending application, was limited in degree of tight-fit for any bag size and matching product weight range because of variations in product size, contour and weight distribution. It is, therefore, an important object of the present invention to increase the degree of tight-fit between the product and the packaging container as well as to improve operational reliability for automatic packaging of poultry dropped from a moving conveyor.